The state’s cannabis regulator has made exactly zero progress to increase its staffing levels months after Gov. Kathy Hochul began tearing the agency apart.
Felicia Reid, acting executive director of the Office of Cannabis Management, said in an interview with Spectrum News last week that her understaffed agency now employs 180 people.
That’s the same amount of staffers OCM employed in April, according to a blistering report Hochul commissioned to point out some failures of the cannabis regulator.
“We are going to prioritize hiring and training new staff capable of strengthening key agency operations, fill senior roles focused on agency operations, customer service, internal controls,” Hochul told reporters at a press conference announcing what she called an “overhaul” of the agency she previously described as a “disaster.”
The Post reported last month that a number of OCM’s senior employees were leaving the agency, including key staffers focused on health and safety, licensing and legal matters.
Chris Alexander, then head of OCM, resigned a week after Hochul delivered her report after previously telling the governor he planned to stay on through September.
A spokesperson for OCM didn’t provide comment on why the agency hasn’t retained and recruited the additional 65 positions the April report said it still needed to fill, but noted that the agency’s director of health and safety is no longer leaving.
They also said OCM has 60 “hires in process.” Only 15 vacancies were shown on the state’s job listings as of Sunday.
“The Office of Cannabis Management has taken critical steps to improve core agency functions by initiating a robust hiring and recruitment process while making existing structures more efficient,” Hochul spokesperson Miguel Arreola told The Post.
“Governor Hochul is continuing to work in collaboration with OCM leadership to take the agency into its next phase and transform New York’s cannabis industry,” he continued.
Reid’s admission last week coincided with another strange move that has left cannabis insiders scratching their heads.
On Friday, Empire State Development released a request for proposals indicating it was contracting out administration of a $5 million grant program meant to reimburse some cannabis dispensaries for expenses related to opening up their business.
A spokesperson for Empire State Development sais it is “assisting with this program on behalf of OCM” and is contracting out the work “for efficiency.”
“We expect respondents to propose admin costs that are competitive and reasonable, which ensures we reserve more funding to award to the eligible small businesses,” the ESD spokesperson said.
Sources told The Post the $5 million for the grants is being repurposed from a previously announced loan program for dispensaries that was supposed to be overseen by the Dormitory Authority but never got off the ground.
